On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Justin W. Flory <jflory7@gmail.com> wrote:

On 11/10/2015 08:33 PM, Lord Drachenblut wrote:

There is one reason for using ow.ly <http://ow.ly> URL shortener and
that is it allows the person posting via hootsuite to track engagement
with a post. I would rather see a URL shortener that is fedora branded
being used if possible.

This was the major point I was thinking of mentioning. Personally, I feel like link shorteners are only necessary if they're being utilized to collect statistics and metrics. Judging by the context of this thread, do we know who has the keys to the Hootsuite? I feel like social media engagement statistics are something that could be an invaluable resource to gauging which of our social media posts are effective and which ones aren't as engaged.

That would be me, actually (and Ruth Suehle as well). Pushing links through the ow.ly link shortener does enable us to track and follow engagements on individual tweets if we want.

If this *is* already happening, then the above paragraph can be disregarded. In the case that statistics and metrics are being tracked, I personally vote to abstain from using link shorteners except where information about engagements and interactions are actually being utilized.

I am not sure what the main objection here is. Aesthetics of an unshortened link seems to be one selling point, but when I look at links from some database-driven content management system sites, I don't see that as a particularly strong reason. Also, while Twitter does automatically shorten though t.co, in practice I have found that the longer the URL, the more likely someone's outdated Twitter client or poor use of Twitter RTs and MTs will mangle the URL.

Shortening it first is a better practice, in my experience.

That said, using HootSuite's ow.ly is kind of sad, and whenever I can, I try to use the Red Hat-branded shortener via bit.ly. This works only on redhat.com domain sites, though, and metrics for engagement have to be tracked separately, so it's aesthetically nice, but kind of a pain, too.

--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7@gmail.com

[snip]

Peace,

Brian

Brian Proffitt

Principal Community Analyst

Open Source and Standards

@TheTechScribe

574.383.9BKP